ended ended up at retirement with 0 - $500,000 in net worth from real estate investing.  

So, I would be very conservative (for your standpoint) on the researched estimate.I would do what I suggested above, then if the tenant takes you to small claims court you explain to the judge the legislative time restrictions you were under in order to come up with an accurate repair expense.This is yet another example of how "tenant protection" laws, in practice, end up hurting the tenant in the end.

Hit me up!

They are up 30% in the past 12 months.

There are meet ups all over the country; i'd recommend a google search of your area to see what pops up. i'd also suggest joining local facebook groups for your area / surrounding areas and ask there.I tend to agree with Stuart here; your first deal should be your own capital here and serve as a proof of concept you can use as an example in moving forward to try and garner money from investors for future deals.Other than bringing a deal to an experienced investor it's unlikely they will want to give capital to someone who hasn't pulled the trigger before.

Great question and you stirred up a lot of comments here.

I've remodeled dozens of houses and done a handful of ground-up construction and I'll give you some reassurance...

As at the time I purchased mine, it wanted looking too bad and I looked it up, found out it was city owned so I went ahead with the deal hoping the city was gonna either sell it soon or do something about it.

It may sound nice to pay a 6% management fee but the extra fees can add up to be more than the other company that charges 10% with no additional fees.

I have had a few tenants sign up for these services but with our management software the companies just deposit the funds using their portal.